San Diego universities, biotechs relieved Trump won't try to deport foreign students

San Diego County universities, which deeply rely on international students for tuition, talent and diversity, collectively exhaled Tuesday after the Trump administration rescinded a rule that could have driven thousands of foreigners out of the country.

The news also elicited relief in the region's huge biomedical research community, which depends on current and former international students to help develop everything from drugs to treat COVID-19 to new ways to image the brain.

Facing eight federal lawsuits and opposition from hundreds of public and private universities, the administration abandoned a rule that would have required international students to transfer or leave the country if their schools held classes entirely online because of the pandemic.

"I am elated that the policy is being reversed," said Adela de la Torre, president of San Diego State University, which plans to offer mostly virtual classes this fall and could be forced to go entirely online if the pandemic gets out of control.

"We have nearly 1,800 international students at SDSU, and the impact of such a policy would have been devastating. I cannot imagine — nor do I want to — a world where international students are restricted in their level of engagement in education."

Schools like UC San Diego and the University of San Diego are planning to offer a mix of in-person and online courses this fall. But the pandemic also could force them to stay with online courses.

The Trump administration changed course Tuesday at the start of a hearing in a federal lawsuit in Boston brought by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs said federal immigration authorities agreed to pull the July 6 directive and "return to the status quo."

Under the policy, international students in the U.S. would have been forbidden from taking all their courses online this fall. New visas would not have been issued to students at schools planning to provide all classes online, which includes Harvard. Students already in the U.S. would have faced deportation if they didn't transfer schools or leave the country voluntarily.

University leaders believed the rule was part of President Donald Trump's effort to pressure the nation's schools and colleges to reopen this fall even as new virus cases rise.

The University of San Diego joined 20 other schools in the western US on Monday in filing their own lawsuit against the federal government.

"Those who are unable to enroll in in-person courses for the fall face the threat of removal," said the lawsuit, filed in US District Court in Oregon. "They may be sent back to a country with little or no internet access, they may face new health or safety risks in that country, or they may not even have a home to go back to. Once expelled, they may never be able to reapply for or reenter the F-1 (student visa) program, thus permanently ending their post-secondary education."

The University of California system joined a separate legal action, and its Board of Regents said late Tuesday: "This sudden reversal by (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is a win for common sense and for public health. Revoking the visas of international students in the midst of a pandemic would have put students' futures, their communities' health, and the U.S. economy in further jeopardy. College and university leaders must be allowed to make decisions about campus operations that are guided by public health experts — not by a hastily drafted, arbitrary and mean-spirited policy."

Roughly 1 million international students were enrolled in US colleges and universities last year. The largest group — roughly 161,000 students — were in California. They spent nearly $7 billion in the state, according to the Association of International Educators.

Together, UCSD, USD and SDSU have almost 12,000 of these students. Most of them — close to 9,000 — are at UCSD, where they pay double the tuition of California residents.

Last year, for the first time, undergraduates from outside of California provided UCSD with more revenue than in-state students.

UCSD's foreign students have a particularly large presence in the health sciences, which drew about 60 percent of the $1.35 billion the campus received last year in research money. Their work recently included the development of a low-cost ventilator for COVID-19 patients.

"We want the best students in our labs working on the hardest problems," said Dr. David Brenner, vice chancellor of health sciences at UCSD. "And that's what we get, in part, because international students want to be here. They know that the US has the best universities in the world.

"Their presence also makes us a better place because we get different types of people from different backgrounds and perspectives. I'm glad they will get to stay in this country to study."

So was Davey Smith, chief of infectious diseases at UCSD.

"In my lab, students from around the country and the world work side-by-side to search for cures for HIV and COVID-19," Smith said Tuesday. "Both of these viral epidemics affect people everywhere and having international trainees within the group brings new expertise and facilitates learning to speed up the scientific process to new discoveries."

The change also was welcomed by Mitch Kronenberg, president of the La Jolla Institute of Immunology, who said international students "are an essential element contributing to our scientific progress and a significant factor in why the USA is preeminent in science research in the biomedical sciences and other disciplines."

USD, which announced its lawsuit against the administration on Monday, reacted with caution on Tuesday, saying it was pleased with the change. But the school said that the lawsuit it joined with 20 other schools "remains in place until that happens."

The issue has been causing a lot of strain at USD, which has more than 700 foreign students. The private, Catholic university said in the spring that the coronavirus had cost the school $17 million and that the figure could double. The Trump administration's rule on online classes, had it gone ahead, could have caused even deeper losses.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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